1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ammunition casing resizer for reloading of the casing wherein the casing is sized along its entire length from the casing's mouth to its extraction groove or rim and wherein the opportunity for the casing to become stuck or otherwise adhered to the resizing dye, is minimized.
2. Background of the Prior Art
The firing of a round of ammunition from a firearm is an extremely violent act. Primer within the round ignites causing the propellant within the round to burn. The chemical reaction created by the burning propellant causes an extremely rapid expansion of gas within the round. This rapid gas expansion, which some consider to be an explosion, although it is not, causes the bullet held by the ammunition casing to overcome the frictional resistance imposed by the casing and be discharged out of the muzzle of the firearm at high velocity. During the gas expansion created by the propellant ignition, the ammunition casing, typically, although not exclusively made of brass, expands and presses against the inside wall of the gun's chamber. After bullet discharge, the casing retracts somewhat from its expansion, but not to its original size. As many firearm owners desire to reuse the casing, as opposed to either recycling the brass or simply tossing the casing into a trash receptacle, the casing needs to be resized back its original size—or as close to its original size as acceptable tolerances allow.
Toward this end, resizing systems have been proposed. Such systems, which come in a wide variety of architectures and work with varying degrees of efficiency, use a resizing die, sized to the appropriate dimensions, and press the die into the casing in order to effect resizing.
A fundamental problem with ammunition resizing systems concerns the frictional engagement of the steel resizing die with the brass casing. Considerable force is required in order to press the steel die into the brass casing in order to resize the casing. As a result, the die and casing can become frictionally stuck to one another requiring the need to separate the two which is not only time-consuming and frustrating, but can also damage the casing. In order to address this problem, a lubricant is used, either a wet lubricant or a dry lubricant. While each type of lubricant offers benefits, each has drawbacks, either in labor intensity in the use of the lubricant or the need to allow the lubricant, as in the case of a dry lubricant, to dry thoroughly prior to casing resizing. Additionally, the use of a lubricant can be problematic in that if too much lubricant is used, the primer and/or propellant can become fouled, leading to ammunition failure, or chambering or ejection can be compromised if the lubricant builds up on the outside of the ammunition.
What is needed is a ammunition casing resizing system that helps prevent the casing becoming stuck to the resizing die without the need to use an expensive carbide resizing die and without excessive reliance on lubricants to perform the resizing task. Such a resizing system must be of relatively simple design and construction and must be easy to use in order to allow appropriate resizing throughput.